While there’ve been complaints that EveryBlock is little more than a tremendous database of photos and impersonal facts, it is a data-rich site full of stories and story possibilities, as Matt Waite points out.

Rex Sorgatz of Fimoculous interviewed Holovaty to learn some of the challenges of building and scaling the site, as well as his plans for data standardization and community features. Of note:

“I guess there’d be some value in standardizing approaches to structured data (like, building a nationwide crime database), but we’re more immediately interested in standardizing the geocoding of ‘blobs.’ The main premise is that locations in news articles should be defined in a machine-readable way. Look for something from us soon.”